Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

Wow, played it some hours now. Ok, it´s some years since i was playing the original first one; but now, it feels that in the remastered edition was no bug fixed, instead of that - they created new bugs. On the whole it´s a fine game, funny to play. In detail it´s a bug-festival - i can not recommend to buy it until a BIIIG bugfixing party from the developers. The only thing which was done is polishing the graphics (very minimalistic)m renaming it to "Re-Re..." and selling it for a price of a new game. Shame on you, THQ!

This game has most of what you want in an action rpg. It is fun to play, and that's what I care about most. The "tapesty of fate" and being the "fateless one" is a little bit cringe, but I can still dig it. The combat is fun for me, I enjoy two handed weapons and charging the attacks up, but I also enjoyed playing a battlemage where the classic spinny staff combat with strikes being punctuated by elemental ranged blasts, feels and looks awesome. I did not get into the stealthy gameplay at all, but it is yet another avenue for me to explore at some point. The graphics aren't amazing, but the style is cohesive throughout the world and reminds me of modern WoW but sharper. It's pretty enough for me and the effects of the spells and combat are well done. Seems well optimized as well, as I have played this on multiple different systems, from a higher end desktop gaming rig comboing an 5700X3D with a 7900XT, to a laptop with a 1660 and an i5 cpu, and it felt smooth on both machines with reasonably high settings, using 1080p 60hz on the laptop and 2k 144hz on the desktop. I've tried playing with mouse+keyboard and an Xbox controller with PC. You can switch between the two control schemes on the fly, seemlessly. The default mappings are fine and I didn't feel the need to change anything. Something that bothers me a bit is the fact that the shield is hidden, and only comes out when you press the block button. I was really hoping to at least have the shield stay on my back at all times or be able to toggle that, but I think they made it this way to maintain the action based, arcadey feel for combat, I dunno, that's just my view. I really wanted to be able to play that classic sword and board build but it's just not really scratching that itch for me. Overall this is a 9/10 game for me, it's fun and keeps me wanting to play it.

This is an Action RPG at its core. One that is tragically flawed. I'll say this much for the game - the range of voice acting is pretty great. And that's it - in 2025 nothing about it holds up. The combat feels floaty, unsubstantial and poorly balanced. On normal everythjing is so trivial its boring on hard everything is so spongey its just a slog and boring. Apparently the builds get interesting but I just can't get over how BLAND the action feels. The most efficient course of action is just to stunlock enemies and potion spam beat down on anything higher than normal because the health pools are just so pointlessly inflated. I just don't care. In this age where games like anything Souls related has firm but fair balancing and has since before this even came out the first time around I just feel my time is being wasted with this. I click the button, the health bar barely moves but the can't do anything click click, hope my clicking doesn't get interupted by adds! Oh no I miss a dodge my healthbar barely moves is not engaging. Turn the difficulty down literally NOTHING is a challenge at all now. Bullet sponges are BAR NONE the most annoying unfun design methods in gaming - it's a fundamental misunderstanding of "high stakes" when your difficulty is just bigger numbers is harder. The game design here just does not understand what makes action fun. This is stuff happening for the sake of stuff happening style gaming. And I suppose I could forgive it given the age of its original design but I'd rather not - it costs people real time and real money today and both could be better spent elsewhere. The game is either barely above an idle game in engagement on the first two difficulties and thus just box ticking MMO tedium in a single player game. Or else just repeating your win combo on things for minutes at a time after figuring out their animations. It's just so very dull. YMMV - I'm sure there's someone out there that this appeals to but this is a hard miss for me.

Big boring world, terrible writing and world exposition. Only fight stands above it.

For those writing negative reviews here due to the re-release, I suggest checking out this page on the Community Wishlist: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/kingdoms_of_amalur_reckoning_original_nonrereckoning Which is specific to the NON-rereckoning version. Anyways, as an actual game, this game is incredible, not much more is needed to be said.